Texas school backs off teaching 9/11 was America’s fault

Fifth graders in a public school in Corpus Christi, Texas will no longer be learning that the United States deserved the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks because of its foreign policy.

Kara Sands, the mother of a student at Flour Bluff Intermediate School, announced earlier this week that the school has agreed to stop teaching that America’s “negative effects” led to the attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people.

Sands says she made the discovery when she was perusing a quiz her son had taken earlier this month.

The third question on the controversial quiz was: “Why might the United States be a target for terrorism?” according to CBS Houston. The credited answer — which Sands’s son did, in fact, select — was (B.) “Decisions we made in the United States have had negative effects on people elsewhere.”

Other possible answers were (A.) “Other people just don’t like Americans,” (C.) “Terrorists hate everyone,” and, of course, (D.) “None of the above.”

The quiz occurred after students watched a half-hour-long video in class called “Remembering September 11th.”

It shows a girl asking an adult about the four coordinated terrorist attacks launched by Islamist terrorists. The adult reportedly answers that some people believe the United States has abused its superpower status.

The video and the corresponding test were both created by a California-based company called SAFARI Montage, says KRIS-TV, the local NBC affiliate.

“This appalling video blames our country for the murder of over 3,000 people,” she commented.

The irate mother contacted the the unnamed fifth-grade teacher and the (also unnamed) principal at her son’s school. She also called SAFARI Montage, which says it will change the question but is otherwise standing behind its video.

At a Thursday night school board meeting, Sands and other parents had their say against both the America-blaming video and quiz, reports local CBS affiliate KZTV. The school board also aired the video.

“I see it’s worse than I thought,” Sands said after the public screening, according to KZTV. “It prefaces with, ‘we can see what really happened or why it happened, and then we can move on.’ It talks about things that we have done, decisions that we have made is the reason why.”

“I’m not going to justify radical terrorists by saying we did anything to deserve that,” Sands also said, according to KRIS-TV.

The school board has apparently capitulated to Sands concerning the video.